Ammonia!

[Webstral]

Ever have one of those “Doh!” moments when you realize you’ve been looking at something for years and not seeing what’s there? Yeah. Having one right now.

According to Howling Wilderness, Colorado has a functioning nuclear power plant. The facility at Platteville is working at 8% of capacity. While electrolyzing water for hydrogen for ammonia is not as efficient as getting hydrogen from hydrocarbons, it certainly can be done. Ammonia is one of the most important soil additives in modern agriculture. As an added bonus, ammonia can be used in place of fossil fuels with minimal adjustments to the engine.

Y’all see where I’m going with this, right? With an operating nuke plant, Milgov can create ammonia for agriculture, moving the ammonia to the fields, and driving modified tractors and combines. The release of population for other important activities, like mining, fighting, and working machines, would be stupendous. The basis of the Colorado economy, with its 3 million inhabitants, might resemble a pre-war economy in a passing way.

Seeing the relationship between electricity and ammonia in this way changes absolutely everything. If ammonia can be synthesized without fossil fuels or organic energy, and if ammonia can both power farm machinery and double, treble, or quintuple crop yields, then anyone with a functioning nuke plant is a superpower. Heck with running the lights or even powering industrial machinery. Having fertilizer and transportation in your hands changes the entire post-Exchange equation.

Seeing this (and knowing that this knowledge must be pretty darned widespread) makes me reconsider the priority of putting nuke plants back on-line. It also makes me think that finding and recovering the people with the knowledge to run hydroelectric plants (also a good source of abundant electricity) would be a very high priority. If I can figure out a way to get ammonia produced in SAMAD, the fuel problem would be solved. I’m not sure if the labor picture would be changed all that much, since the most limiting factor in Samadi agriculture is water, which is applied by hand.

Unfortunately, the New Americans in west central Florida also have a real basis of power with their electrical plants. With ammonia for fertilizer and fuel, the New Americans will be even more powerful than they have been made out to be in Urban Guerilla.

[Tegyrius]

Holy crop yield, Batman. That completely changes the "incipient collapse of industrial agriculture" issue for the 2013 Czech Republic setting, too, thanks to the similarly functional plant at Temelin. And it makes the region even more of a treasure/target than it was before. Thanks, Web!

- C.

[ArmySGT.]

That makes the EBR-1 and the Idaho National Laboratory valuable again outside Butte, Idaho.

Pretty nice ranges. The Dept of Energy sure takes a supposedly closed site seriously.

[ArmySGT.]

Are you factoring in the U.S. Navy Oil Shale reserves on the Western Slope?

There is significant coal in Colorado too. It is mostly drift mined so strip mining for coal in Wyoming and Montana is cheaper.

Don't forget that Wyoming and Montana have their own Oil refineries. If those are able to be brought online.

As far as MilGov goes who did the Denver Mint side with? What about the Federal Center on the West Side of Lakewood, CO. The National Institute of Science and Technology (Boulder, CO).

In the 90s the Rocky Flats Depot was open with nuclear warheads processing.

[Webstral]

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

Are you factoring in the U.S. Navy Oil Shale reserves on the Western Slope?

There is significant coal in Colorado too. It is mostly drift mined so strip mining for coal in Wyoming and Montana is cheaper.

Don't forget that Wyoming and Montana have their own Oil refineries. If those are able to be brought online.

Certainly, Milgov is going to avail itself of each and every energy resource. I expect the oil, coal, and natural gas available in Colorado and Wyoming to be utilized to the max. Ammonia produced by electricity from the Ft. St. Vrain nuclear plant at Platteville offers Milgov an important opportunity to diversify, not replace. When one considers the idea that ammonia produced near the nuke plant using water and air (!) doesn’t require feedstock to be moved from the fields where oil, natural gas, and coal are being extracted to a processing facility of some sort, then to the point of use. If ammonia only gets used in the fields and in the engines of farming machinery (because the tanks of ammonia are going to the farms anyway), both ammonia and the nuke plant have an enormous role to play in Colorado and the recovery of the nation.

I think ammonia is the solution I have been looking for regarding fuel for the military vehicles of SAMAD. I never have been happy with fueling trucks and AFV with alcohol or biodiesel. Fuels based on food reverse the ideal flow of types of energy from inorganic-organic to organic-inorganic. Using people food to power machinery is an act of desperation. Twilight: 2000 is a desperate time, so I don’t have an issue with its happening. However, smart people are going to power their machines with energy that can’t go into people’s stomachs whenever possible. Ideally, inorganic energy will get turned into organic energy. Using electricity from nuclear power, solar, wind, etc. to create ammonia, which in turn creates more food and powers the farm implements turns the desperation of Twilight: 2000 back to a more pre-war norm. Now I have to put some numbers to my little scheme for Samadi ammonia.

[Tombot]

Originally Posted by Tegyrius

Holy crop yield, Batman.

- C.

[WallShadow]

Originally Posted by Webstral

Ever have one of those “Doh!” moments when you realize you’ve been looking at something for years and not seeing what’s there? Yeah. Having one right now.

According to Howling Wilderness, Colorado has a functioning nuclear power plant. The facility at Platteville is working at 8% of capacity. While electrolyzing water for hydrogen for ammonia is not as efficient as getting hydrogen from hydrocarbons, it certainly can be done. Ammonia is one of the most important soil additives in modern agriculture. As an added bonus, ammonia can be used in place of fossil fuels with minimal adjustments to the engine.

<SNIP>
Seeing this (and knowing that this knowledge must be pretty darned widespread) makes me reconsider the priority of putting nuke plants back on-line. It also makes me think that finding and recovering the people with the knowledge to run hydroelectric plants (also a good source of abundant electricity) would be a very high priority. If I can figure out a way to get ammonia produced in SAMAD, the fuel problem would be solved. I’m not sure if the labor picture would be changed all that much, since the most limiting factor in Samadi agriculture is water, which is applied by hand. [/I].

Uh, Webstral, what is SAMAD, or any enclave of civilization doing with the liquid component of its sewage? Lots of ready-made ammonia waiting for harvesting right there, useable with minimal processing.

[Webstral]

Originally Posted by WallShadow

Uh, Webstral, what is SAMAD, or any enclave of civilization doing with the liquid component of its sewage? Lots of ready-made ammonia waiting for harvesting right there, useable with minimal processing.

Certainly, research shows that urine can be an effective fertilizer. There are some potential long-term issues with salts, but in the years immediately following the Exchange few are going to be concerned about that. For intensive gardening, where the source of urine and the plants to be fertilized are closely co-located, urine might compete well with ammonia fertilizer. For larger-scale farming, though, gathering and applying urine might be a difficult exercise. Still, it would be interesting to see the results of a concerted effort to gather urine (and urine only) for spraying on fields as a fertilizer. The survivors of the nuclear exchange should be amenable to having their habits changed if anyone is.

Ammonia also has the advantage of being useful as fuel. As the scale of agriculture expands from garden plots to something resembling modern American agriculture, you have to pull the plow and the combines somehow. Modern machinery has the advantage of minimizing labor, provided you can fuel the machines. You can use horses, but they need a portion of the food being grown. Turning electricity into fertilizer and fuel for the farm machines enables a handful of people to do the job relative to the huge numbers of folks involved in subsistence agriculture throughout much of the US in 2000. People freed from the farms can do other jobs, like fight or make things.

So while urine certainly can do the job of fertilizing, it seems to lend itself more to intensive gardening than large-scale agriculture when compared to industrially-produced ammonia. Provided yields are in any way comparable, the practitioners of large-scale agriculture are going to have an edge over the intensive gardeners because the large-scale folks will be able to commit more manpower to doing things beside growing food.

[WallShadow]

Webstral, your line on ammonia has another benefit in the scheme of food production--feeding ammonia-treated low quality silages (straw and other sub-optimum feed) to milch cattle improves milk production and muscle weight. This allows cattle to be fed on less-desirable materials with the same result as higher-quality feeds--more cattle can be fed with the normal amount of regular feed. Also, this process works best on low-quality silages--better quality feedstocks are only minimally affected.

For some reason this clicked in my head when I was remembering that hominy is maize treated with lye....

[mikeo80]

This topic made me pause and think for a moment.

Here in NC, we have Sharon Harris Nuke Plant near Raleigh/Durham. According to V1.0 and V2.2, this area does not catch a "present". And, this area also joins "CivGov".

NC does not have the advantage of coal, however, there is a HUGE turkey and hog farming subsector of the economy.

These factors should help the local (i.e. Southern Va, NC, SC) economy start on the way back to something "normal".

My $0.02

Mike

[Tegyrius]

I will reluctantly point out that "intact" doesn't necessarily mean "functional" where a nuke plant is concerned. I suspect a lot of them were shut down when the first nuclear strike warnings went out because of the danger of EMP doing something unpleasant to the control systems. Even those which survived physically (and electronically) intact would need to be brought back online, and trained personnel are going to be rare and hard to find by 7/2000 (or later). Look at the Navy's difficulty in scrounging up nuclear power plant operators for City of Corpus Christi.

Needless to say, that sort of recruiting project is tailor-made for PCs...

- C.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by mikeo80

Here in NC, we have Sharon Harris Nuke Plant near Raleigh/Durham. According to V1.0 and V2.2, this area does not catch a "present". And, this area also joins "CivGov".

I'll mention a point often made by others on this forum (that bears repeating): just because it's not on the game's published nuke target lists doesn't definitively mean it wasn't nuked. It just means it wasn't hit by a warhead 500kt or larger. Now, I'm not suggesting that the Sharon Harris Nuke Plant WAS nuked (to be honest I don't have an opinion one way or the other), I'm just saying that we often forget that the published target lists were listing only half megaton strikes and larger. Any given site on the entire planet NOT mentioned in the published lists could still have been nuked, with a low-yield warhead, a cruise missile nuke, nuclear artillery, a small air-delivered nuke or even a backpack nuke. Or a big conventional strike. Or a chem strike. Or nothing at all.

[TrailerParkJawa]

One problem with nuclear power plants has been highlighted by Fukishima. Lose total power for x amount of hours and it's meltdown city. If there was an EMP that cripple almost everything then many reactors around the US should have meltdown cause there was not enough time to cool them down or any way to get sufficient supplies of diesel to everylant for extended periods.

However it would seem reasonable that some plants were offline for maintenance or just as a precaution against such an event. So those plants possibl would be available to crank up for recovery.

As for ammonia I never gave it much thought. Just having fuel to run irrigation or tractors would be a god send compared to oxen and hand planting.

Wouldn't ammonia come in handy for some explosives?

[Webstral]

Originally Posted by TrailerParkJawa

Wouldn't ammonia come in handy for some explosives?

It sure would. There's another competitor for a scarce resource. If you have ammonia for creating nitrates, you have the right stuff for making things that go bang. This would be a tremendous resource for anyone with the ability to produce anhydrous ammonia to trade to those without. One wonders at what exchange rate small arms ammunition (does smokeless powder require nitrates?), machine gun ammunition, and mortar rounds could be traded for food, even if the other party were a modest cantonment with 85% of its labor devoted to growing or acquiring food.

[manunancy]

As far as I know the most convenient nitration source for making explosives is nitric acid - if you can cook some, nitrocellulose is a quick and relatively easy step.

[DocSavage45B10]

Fukishima specifically happened because the backup diesels were swept away or flooded out by a tsunami that was over the maximum planned height. Any plant whose diesels survive the exchange will be able to shutdown gracefuly assuming the operators do not panic.

Originally Posted by TrailerParkJawa

One problem with nuclear power plants has been highlighted by Fukishima. Lose total power for x amount of hours and it's meltdown city. If there was an EMP that cripple almost everything then many reactors around the US should have meltdown cause there was not enough time to cool them down or any way to get sufficient supplies of diesel to everylant for extended periods.

However it would seem reasonable that some plants were offline for maintenance or just as a precaution against such an event. So those plants possibl would be available to crank up for recovery.

As for ammonia I never gave it much thought. Just having fuel to run irrigation or tractors would be a god send compared to oxen and hand planting.

Wouldn't ammonia come in handy for some explosives?

[Legbreaker]

And I believe basic diesels don't need any electrical systems to keep running so shouldn't be greatly effected by EMP (provided they don't have an electrical starter).
But then I'm no mechanic, so....

[Graebarde]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

And I believe basic diesels don't need any electrical systems to keep running so shouldn't be greatly effected by EMP (provided they don't have an electrical starter).
But then I'm no mechanic, so....

Correct, but the modern diesels have electronic controlled injection system. IF you have a mechanical pumped engine it will run without electric. NOW the question is would EMP effect a battery? Or an electric motor (starter) that was not in operation when the EMP occured? You're REALLY going to have a problem getting diesel engines going without an electric starter. Gas engines were hand cranked relatively easy. SOME diesel engines CAN be hand started, but they are stationary with large flywheels (such as those Lister engines). NOW IF you have a long slope to park the tractor on before you shut it down, and do a good prestart prep (ie prime etc) you MIGHT roll it down and pop the clutch.. oops, most diesel tractors I've seen around lately have a form of automatic transmission system.. so that MIGHT not work either. Heck depending on the weather, the standard transmission diesel is not a sure thing. We've done it, but it sure isn't fun, then we've had to pull the dang thing around for five minutes trying to get it to fire up when it was cold and batteries were dead (farm tractor pulling other farm tractor)

[Legbreaker]

"Standard" transmission in most parts of the world is manual rather than automatic.

I read "Fade out" by Patrick Tilley a few years back which involves aliens playing about with the electrical field of the planet to stop anything stronger than the electrical signals in a living creature working. Computers, radios, electric lights, cars, everything just stopped. Only older diesel engines were able to continue operating and were started using a sort of preloaded cartridge to turn the engine over (it's been a few years, the details are sketchy).

A good read which I think shows just how primitive things can be when EMP gets nasty.

[DocSavage45B10]

The impression I get from relatives and aquaintences with time in the chair force is that EMP is highly overrated in pop media.

[Graebarde]

Originally Posted by TrailerParkJawa

As for ammonia I never gave it much thought. Just having fuel to run irrigation or tractors would be a god send compared to oxen and hand planting.

Muscle powered agriculture will NOT be oxen or horses in general for at least FOUR years after the demise of the tractor. It takes that long to get an ox or horse mature enough and trained to do real work. IF you try too young, and the pleasure horse people are really bad about this, they have not developed their skeletal or muscles to handle the loads and you will either kill or maime them, and your back to YOUR muscles again. As for heavy horses, while their number and popularity are on the rise, their number nationally is very low. I fear most animals on farms would wind up as burgers for the ignorant starving mass of locust from the cities, as will seed grains etc..

But that is a different thread.

[TrailerParkJawa]

Originally Posted by Graebarde

Muscle powered agriculture will NOT be oxen or horses in general for at least FOUR years after the demise of the tractor. It takes that long to get an ox or horse mature enough and trained to do real work. IF you try too young, and the pleasure horse people are really bad about this, they have not developed their skeletal or muscles to handle the loads and you will either kill or maime them, and your back to YOUR muscles again. As for heavy horses, while their number and popularity are on the rise, their number nationally is very low. I fear most animals on farms would wind up as burgers for the ignorant starving mass of locust from the cities, as will seed grains etc..

But that is a different thread.

That's good to know. Honestly never gave it any thought. I'm sure it's more common knowledge in Asia but here int the US probably less so.